come happy, come prepared
by mnemonica
Summary: You can even come without your underwear.


**titled **_come happy, come prepared_  
**pair of** turkey/greece (without japan what is this)  
**rated** r  
**warnings for **greece being all fanboy on turkey. smyrna and earthquake diplomacy. thinly-veiled sexy tiems in the shower. hur  
**notes** 2000 words written because **writing without the shift key** is apparently very therapeutic. and ffffff don't be a hater it's my birthday today. C:  
**summary** You can even come without your underwear.

* * *

_come happy, come prepared_

-/-

"we're allies. but you see, we're _allies._"

-/-

(i kept your promises in my head. i made sure that you had a small idea of who i was and what i stood for, policies that i put my money into and people whom i believed could change the world and fly above the universe and make a miracle from a dime. the songs on the radio that played at odd intervals, the ones that you sang in the shower and i pretended i couldn't hear. and i swear to god, you couldn't sing for shit. you still can't.

and then there were those memories that i may or may not have shared with you. i cooked spaghetti for dinner on the last night because i wanted you to know that i read about it in a book and that it mattered to me. i don't read a lot of books anymore. the spaghetti was just getting soft, too. _al dente._ it tasted very soft but it was a little springy. it was good spaghetti. italy would have been proud of us.

so you see, i had it all right and ready, you knew what i was going to do and i knew that you knew it but we ignored it anyway.

so my only question for you is this:

you ignored it.

why did you ignore it?)

-/-

"yo. you're sitting on my turf."

"i am not."

the Ottoman Empire doesn't bat an eyelash. so his mother writes stories about being incestuous and his men played sports in their birthday suits. so he had more sex in his country than japan. didn't make him any better than the rest of the mediterranean sea.

"i hear you're the Cradle of Western Civilization, yeah? could've pulled a better title from my ass."

"do you want a chair?" heracles asks him politely, pats the ground next to his leg.

"such a brat. get out of here."

"i would prefer not to."

"really, now," he snorts, "why does the earth stop spinning, then?"

greece frowns softly. "it doesn't."

-/-

when he had first applied for entry into the European Union, he had not questioned his motives. it simply seemed like the natural thing to do. he had set up years of relations with the rest of of the countries, delivered olives to france and drank tea off the british and made textiles with the best of spain. he'd eaten grapes on the shores of an island slightly off-kilter from crete, kissed the women in italy, had a grand time frolicking around the greenery squares in holland, wild spinach in the gardens free for picking and the children skipping around the metal sky-gliders in the open-air playgrounds. he'd even compared notes with america, looked over the fucked-up places and narrowed in on the specific tariff taxes. he's good at this. he's always had the relations and the money and the capitalism and the democratic policies. he is the very embodiment of democracy.

(and he loves it.)

"lookin' to get back together with greece again?" spain had smirked.

he had pushed antonio into the wall, heard with satisfaction the crunch of shoulder bones against the bricks.

"none of your fuckin' business."

so it hadn't seemed like a bad plan. he had his reasons for playing it this way, and he had no doubt that heracles had his, too. it was all very amicable. he'd walked in through the building shuffling his feet and out through the building with a spring in his step, clouds in the blue sky and birds singing songs about love and somebody's television blasting Stephen Colbert. negotiations were better than fire. anything was better than fire.

it was all very amicable.

-/-

"the treaty of sevres," heracles tells him coolly, "the treaty of sevres dictates my administration over the region for the next five years."

"well, _fuck_ the treaty of sevres," sadiq says, "and _fuck you_, too."

"...do you want to?"

-/-

so you see, heracles doesn't kiss him so much as consumes him, keeps a steady hand on his shoulder while reaching deep into his mouth and his chest, grabs his heart and his lungs in a tight fist and crushes them, only crushes them against the palm of his hand until he's out of breath and he's certain he's about to have a heart attack, and then the roles are reversed and he's probing with his fingers, feeling for the gasps and the moans and scraping his teeth against a collar bone. there's something furry by his left foot and he kicks it away, feels greece wince under his body and pushes him harder. it's a sign of defeat, he takes it as a sign of defeat.

the shower in the house is a small box with a smaller nozzle and a tiled wall that wobbles when he leans too far on it. when the water splashes across their faces, it doesn't reach his back and they huddle under it together, a rain dance under a fallen sky. the hairs on his chin scratch against both of their faces, and he maps the lines of the water on heracles' skin with his mouth, pushes him up against the tiles and feels the trembles underneath his fingertips, taps it and teases it, curls into it. pushes into it and stretches the heat between them, crushes his ears against the beating of a heart. pushes his fingers deeper, digs into a soft spot and heracles hisses, grabs his cock and strokes it furiously. the shower runs dry and neither of them miss the absence of the water. the sky turns red.

greece's fingers are outstretched, skin cracked and dry and turkey takes it, he takes to it like it's his last breath on earth.

-/-

because the first time greece leaves him behind, he'd gone to the other side for the war and tossed him a hand grenade. dropped it in his face in the manner of all the Hemingway heroes and laughed in his face, slept out with the officers at the army camps with and played courtesan to his greek women, left turkey out in the aftermath of the day to wallow in self-pity and raindrops. and the shower head has no problem pouring out its problems and turkey has no problem accepting them.

we'll tell them who's boss, the first man had whispered in the minister's ear, and then the second man and the third man and the fourth man and the fifth man came around and they were all playing with matches, they were all playing with fire.

his fingers shake a little when he dials the numbers on the phone. waits for the call to reach, heart skips a sullen beat when he hears the pause before the pick-up. there's a comforting bit of silence, before he realizes that the call's been dropped and the signal's so shitty he could probably pick it apart with his fingernails, dials the number again and his palms are sweating now pick-up _pick-up_ _pick-up_, goddamn you greece you stupid fuck.

and he does.

"i apologize, i don't think now is the time t-"

"hello, greece. you feel the heat?"

a pause.

"'cause i can feel it, y'know. i can feel it from all the way here. some fire, huh?"

"YOU FUCKING BASTARD," he hears greece roar, and that's when he hangs up, because his fingers are shaking too hard to hold the receiver any longer.

-/-

he kisses him quickly and roughly and heracles doesn't kiss him back and he kind of realizes what he's doing but he's simultaneously unaware and OK, so maybe he's pretty sure that he _doesn't want to be _aware, but it's never stopped him before, so why should it stop him now?

why does the earth stop spinning?

(the answer is cyprus.)

-/-

"do you want the land?"

heracles looks up at him lazily, curls an arm around the tabby cat. he cups a hand over his eyes and stares at turkey in the sun and in the stars. what is there to say, he's wondering.

"hello, turkey."

"do you want the land?" he asks again, and heracles rolls over onto his stomach. the cat falls off his lap.

"goodbye, turkey."

-/-

and on the day the earth stops spinning, it trembles, instead. the shingles fall from the house and prayers fall from the sky, the seas rumble and Anatolia gasps in surprise, mothers look for their children and children look for their friends and the world is on fire, it's really on fire this time. he sees a girl run by, glass shards caught between the skin on her feet and debris swallowed by her hair. blood dribbles on the ground like tears. he sees the sky turn red, turn black, turn violet, turn red.

what have you done now, he asks the heat in the air and dust in the skies, what have you done, what have i done, why am undead, why must i live to see this and that is when he sees heracles' hand.

greece's fingers are outstretched, skin cracked and dry and turkey takes it, he takes to it like it's his last breath on earth.

-/-

"negotiations take a long time," the UN official informs his boss. "it could take years and years."

"and years?"

"and years."

"but i want in on it now," turkey insists, and he doesn't care if he sounds childish, now, "i've advanced the papers as much as i could and we've already finished negotiations on the economic portions."

"you just want to see greece again, don't you? have another opportunity to bash his head in," his boss smiles, and pats him on the shoulders. "he'll still be there in another twenty years."

-/-

(so you see, i'm not dead. i'm not dead, and neither are you and neither are my feelings for you and your death and the burns on my skin and burns on your thoughts and the blood that you have felt on your hands since 1299. you are neither alive nor are you dead to me. and even though you want to keep telling me that it's all my fault, there's a part of you that doesn't want to believe it, either, like the part of me that enjoyed reading the book and curling the spaghetti around my fork and singing the europop hits on the radio while i was washing away the dirt behind your ears. you were so gentle in the shower, because i can't sing for shit. there's that part of you, too, so you don't understand how difficult this is for me. it's so difficult.

there was a part of me that reached out for that part of you, but why did you ignore it?

"some other time," you would say on the rare occasion.

and maybe this is the reason why.)

-/-

"i am in love with the Ottoman Empire," the young boy tells his mother in 1831, "i have studied his battles and his wars and i am in love with him. i am certain it is an honor to have fought my way to freedom away from him. i am certain of this, just as i am certain that he doesn't understand this specific kind of enmity that i feel for him. and so i am at once in conflict and in love with him. do you think we'll ever become friends?"

-/-

the end

* * *

+ fact: greece won independence from the ottoman empire in 1830.  
+ fact: treaty of sevres (8/10/1919) stipulated that "(1) Smyrna and the adjacent regions of Anatolia would nominally remain Ottoman but would be administered by Greece for five years, after which a plebiscite would determine whether it would be Turkish or Greek; (2) virtually all of Thrace, both eastern and western, would be ceded to Greece; (3) Constantinople (Istanbul) would remain under Ottoman control, but a substantial garrison of former Entente powers would remain there" (source).  
+ cyprus. oh dear lord cyprus. hnnnngh.  
+ i used the Gale World History database for research this time around. so like, it's legit. ohoho.  
+ ...did i srsly just reference stephen colbert omg i think i did. o/o

* * *

_Thanks for reading! Reviews are wonderful things. =)_


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